I have recently been investigating the functionality of our online 360 degree appraisal and performance review tools. We're looking into ways in which we can improve the overall process. This led me to question "What are we trying to do?".

At Bowland Solutions, we live and breathe annual performance reviews and 360 degree feedback, all day, every day. It would be wrong to think that most of our users do the same, though it can be all too easy to forget this. For the average user,  the quality is not in the system, but in the feedback they receive. So, to answer my own question, the goal of our online feedback tools is to get out of the way and allow the users to leave quality feedback unhindered and deliver this feedback to the recipient in a clear, concise manner.

With that in mind, maybe the question itself is wrong? Maybe it should be "What are we trying not to do?".

I'll keep you posted on my research in this area, but if you have any ideas or feature requests for either our 360 feedback or performance appraisal tools then feel free to drop us an email, we really do value the feedback!

David